What does a WhatsApp chatbot cost a clinic in India?

Every WhatsApp chatbot quote hides two numbers: what Meta charges to deliver the message, and what the vendor charges on top. Here is what each one actually costs in India right now, sourced, plus the change coming on 1 October 2026 that most pricing pages have not caught up with yet.

What does Meta charge for WhatsApp messages in India?

Meta bills every WhatsApp Business Platform account per template message it delivers, not per conversation, a change that took effect on 1 July 2025 according to Meta's own pricing page (opens in a new tab). A template is a pre-approved message format, the kind a chatbot sends for a confirmation, a reminder, an OTP or an offer. There are three billable categories, and the rate depends on which one a message falls under.

A clinic sending appointment confirmations pays the utility rate. A clinic running a reactivation campaign pays the marketing rate, which is more than seven times higher for the same volume of messages. The category a message is filed under, not the tool that sends it, decides most of the bill.

Which WhatsApp messages are still free?

Free WhatsApp cost comes from one thing: whether the patient wrote to your clinic first. Once a patient messages you, a 24-hour customer service window opens, and any reply you send inside it, template or not, is free. Outside that window, your clinic has to use a template, and templates are billed on delivery.

There is also a second free window worth knowing: messages sent after a patient taps a Click to WhatsApp ad or a Facebook Page's WhatsApp button stay free for 72 hours, a "Free Entry Point" window, per Meta's pricing page (opens in a new tab). Useful if a clinic runs click-to-WhatsApp ads, less relevant for a patient who simply saves your number and writes in.

What do WhatsApp chatbot vendors charge on top?

A vendor's price is not Meta's price plus zero. Every chatbot tool built on the WhatsApp Business Platform charges its own monthly plan for the software, and several also charge their own per-message rate for template delivery, separate from what Meta actually charges them. The table below uses only prices each vendor has published on its own pricing page.

None of this makes a monthly plan the wrong choice. It means the plan fee is only part of the bill for a vendor priced this way; the number of templates your clinic sends each month decides the rest. A quiet month and a campaign month can land on very different totals from the same plan.

What other costs catch clinics out?

Beyond the plan fee and the per-message rate, three things turn a small headline number into a bigger bill: how templates get approved, what a contract locks you into, and who is spending time on the account.

• Template approval. Every template (a reminder, a confirmation, an offer) has to be submitted to Meta and approved before it can be sent. Approval is usually free, but a rejected template has to be rewritten and resubmitted, which costs time, not money, while your clinic waits.
• Contract length. Some vendors bill month to month; others ask for an annual commitment in exchange for a lower monthly rate, shown as the "yearly" price on several pricing pages above. A lower number attached to a year-long lock-in is a different offer from the same number month to month.
• Staff time. Someone still has to write templates in plain language, keep fees and timings current, and check what the bot is actually saying to patients. That is a real cost even on a plan with no line item for it.

There is a fourth cost a rate card never shows: whether the message is something a doctor should be sending at all. A WhatsApp "marketing" template used for an offer or a reactivation campaign is commercial outreach to people who did not ask for it, not a reply to an enquiry.

What does Medslots cost?

Medslots is priced as one flat number, not a plan plus a per-message rate. A clinic pays ₹4,999 a month, and an additional ₹2,500 a month for each extra branch. There is no setup fee, no contract, and no per-message charges added on top of that price. Billing starts the day the account goes live, usually within 24 hours of signup.

If you are comparing this to the WhatsApp Business Platform rates and vendor plans above: those numbers explain what Medslots itself has to plan around on the back end. They are not a separate charge that gets passed on to your clinic's bill.

How do I work out my clinic's monthly cost?

If you are comparing a per-message vendor against a flat price, the honest way to do it is with your own expected message counts, not a vendor's best-case example. Use Meta's own rate below as the floor; a vendor's bill will be at least this, usually more once its plan fee and any markup are added.

For a plain comparison, Medslots' own monthly cost does not move with any of those three numbers: it stays ₹4,999 a month per clinic whatever your message volume looks like. Read how that compares to a receptionist's salary, or start with what an AI receptionist for a clinic actually does if you're still deciding whether you need one.

A note for busier clinics

A dental, dermatology or fertility clinic running frequent recall or reactivation campaigns will send more marketing templates than a general practice replying only to enquiries. Since marketing is billed at over seven times the utility rate, that is the number worth checking most closely in any vendor quote, whatever else the plan includes.